Laser-Guided Weather Study Conducted From Space Shuttle
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Bright green laser pulses streamed from the space shuttle Discovery on Saturday and bounced off thick, high clouds over a tropical storm in the first atmospheric study of its kind.
Ground controllers directed the lasers at Tropical Storm Debby in the Caribbean as the shuttle soared 160 miles overhead. The experiment was conducted in the early morning while it was dark.
Light from the lasers was reflected off the clouds back toward Discovery and collected by instruments in the cargo bay. Bob Menzies, an atmospheric scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said he should be able to determine the altitude of the clouds by the end of this weekend--valuable information for meteorologists tracking the storm.
“We’re really excited about it,” he said from the command center at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s usually some activity in that region this time of year, so our chances were pretty good” of monitoring a storm.
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